


watch out, strange cat people

by ghost_teeth



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Gen, Non-Binary Party Poison, Non-Consensual Haircuts, pre-Girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23253178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth
Summary: Party Poison’s shoulders are drawn up to their ears, and their hands are stiff claws at their sides. There’s something unhinged lurking in the corners of their toothy smile, and Jet Star realizes with a sudden and terrible certainty that they’re scared. Really and truly shit-your-pants scared.
Relationships: Jet Star & Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	watch out, strange cat people

The real kicker is how utterly forgettable the fuckers are, at least by Zones standards—coyote-skinny, scabby with waveburn, done up like peacocks in acid-bright castoffs. They could be anyone. But sometimes even Joe Schmo gets lucky.

There are five of them, six maybe, stood in a sloppy circle like crooked fenceposts, hooting and swilling something that smells faintly of gasoline out of old soda cans. Beyond them—at a healthy distance—there’s a concentric circle of looky-loos, some hoping for blood, others protesting half-heartedly. In the spaces between, three figures are pacing the perimeter like caged tigers, masks on.

And there’s Party Poison, stock-still in the center of it all, collared and snarling for all they’re worth. 

A night out, their first in weeks—a show with a pit that cost people teeth and a bar serving something potent and purple out of a plastic bucket. It was something like dumb luck that got the collar around Party’s neck, locked tight under their jaw in the press of bodies at the bar before they could react. It’s a clunky piece of shit but effective, too tight even to wiggle and reeking of chemical potential. They’d barely needed to touch it to know what it was: a lid-flipper, a dirty sort of lowdown trick even the lowest sort of shit-sucking zonerat would consider beneath them—not clean like a knife in the back or a zap to the head, just cruelty for its own sake, with plenty of extra-spicy mess and collateral.

They’d slapped Jet Star’s arm to get his attention before barreling out of the crowd, desperate for distance and room to think. Jet hadn’t understood at first, had sort of figured that maybe they’d had too much to drink and needed someone to watch their pockets while they puked outside (never puke alone—it’s a great way to get robbed blind. Zones wisdom most learned the hard way). But he’d seen the shitstain posse cutting through the crowd like barracudas after them, and had made the connection in time to grab Ghoul and Kobra and follow. 

They’re far enough from the bar now that it’s just a glow over the brow of a dune, but not far enough that the ruckus from inside doesn’t drift over on the breeze. It’s like a canned laugh track on an old sitcom, and it turns Jet’s stomach.

Sunsets in the zones are toxic-bright, all cartoon-racecar red and caution-tape yellow thanks to the polluted atmosphere, and the dying light sends up all of Party Poison’s colors like a road flare. Their lips are skinned back in an ugly trapped-animal smile and their teeth seem sharper than Jet ever remembers them looking.

“It’s a nice piece, sure, but I don’t think it really goes with the rest of my outfit,” they’re saying to the one that looks like the leader of the Joe Schmo brigade, the one with his finger on the detonator. “I kept my receipt—can I return it for store credit?”

The detonator looks like it was rigged from an ancient pager, and the guy’s thumb is petting it obscenely. “Oh, b’lieve me, it’s definitely your style,” he crows. “Really lights you up, yanno?” He’s slime-colored, all sickish green, dripping with plastic Mardi Gras beads. There are three zappers trained on him, but he’s got the aces and he knows it. Detonators like this one, you have to keep them upright, can’t jostle them too much. Granted, they’re hit or miss; there’s always the possibility they might not go off, but you never know.

“The hell you even want from us, ratfucker?” Kobra hisses from across the circle. Behind his helmet, his voice sounds remote, otherworldly, portentous. He starts forward, as if to enter the circle, but Party throws up a hand. 

“Nope, you stay back.” They’re muttering out the corner of their mouth, but it carries—they’ve just got one of those voices. Their eyes never leave the one with the detonator. “You stay the fuck back. Don’t want any of you anywhere near this.” 

Kitty-corner from the triggerman, Jet’s going walleyed trying to keep three of the fuckers in his sights at the same time without looking away from Party. They might not see him, he thinks, if he were to move fast enough, creep over there and grab Slimeball’s upheld wrist before lighting him up. Jet’s head-and-shoulders taller than most malnourished ‘Runners—benefits of a few more years spent incubating in the city, maybe—but somehow he’s always been the easiest to overlook, the one nobody sees coming. 

Ghoul’s brushing by his elbow then, jabbing a finger into Jet’s side. “Grab it,” he hisses. “I’ll get you there, just grab it.” He’s got an animal sense for other people’s intentions, does Ghoul. 

Jet nods tightly, just once, and Ghoul’s hand shoots up like a little kid in class. “Hey mister?” Ghoul hollers in the most obnoxious sort of voice, the sort that starts fights for fun. In that instant, all eyes are on him. “Hey, uh, so, chalk it up to a history of head trauma, but, uh, like, do we even fuckin’ _know_ you?”

It’s easy for Jet to melt back into the throng of onlookers, sidling sideways at a caterpillar pace. 

Slimeball is sneering so hard it’s almost audible. “Prolly not,” he says. “We’re nobody, right? Not like the _Fabulous_ Four.”

“If you say so,” says Ghoul.

“Thanks for remembering the ‘Fabulous.’” Party Poison’s shoulders are drawn up to their ears, and their hands are stiff claws at their sides. There’s something unhinged lurking in the corners of their toothy smile, and Jet Star realizes with a sudden and terrible certainty that they’re _scared_. Really and truly shit-your-pants _scared_. It’s not the sort of thing you want to see in someone whose every breath has a deathwish on the exhale. 

Slimeball is fingering a mask looped around his neck, some cheap little purple domino thing, and it really doesn’t jive with the rest of his ensemble. “Cute. Real cute. You really don’t give much thought to collateral damage, like, ever, do you?”

Ghoul shrugs extravagantly. “I don’t even know what ‘collateral’ means, so.” 

There’s something sharp about Slimeball, Jet thinks. Sure, the rest of his crew are all dick and stomach, but there’s something a little too-good-for-this about their leader. Doesn’t matter. Jet’s almost on him. This circus is almost over.

“Get this thing off me and we’ll talk collateral all you want.” Party’s bared teeth catch the red glare off the evening sun.

One of Slimeball’s skinny arms shoots out. There are three and half fingers on his scabby hand, and he wiggles them in a _gimme-gimme_ motion. “How ‘bout hand over your jacket and I’ll consider it.”

“No,” says Party, at the same time as Kobra says, “Fine.” Party whirls around to shoot Kobra an outraged look. Kobra indicates through an elaborate series of eyebrow movements and hand gestures exactly which bits of Party he’s going to chop off and where they’ll be inserted if Party doesn’t comply with the demand.

Party growls, actually growls, like a junkyard dog. “Fine.”

It’s strange, watching them shuck the blue Dead Pegasus jacket. It’s not as if Jet’s never seen them without it, but in this context they seem somehow smaller, softer, with their scrawny pale arms on display. They chuck the jacket in Slimeball’s direction, and he plants his foot on it when it lands, deliberately dragging it through the dust so he can stand on it. Someone in the surrounding crowd whistles.

“Your boots,” says Slimeball. It seems like it shouldn’t be possible, the way his grin stretches up one side of his face. “Those next.”

Party doesn’t bend to untie their boots. They just lift one foot up and then the other, like a flamingo, untying the shoelaces and yanking the boots off. They toss the boots underhand, and they land with two sinister thuds at Slimeball’s feet. Jet’s almost there, almost within arm’s reach. He’s gotta get it just right, make sure he doesn’t lunge too early, make sure he gets hold of that detonator before it ever has the chance to tip over.

“Your zap.”

The zapper joins Party’s boots in the sand at Slimeball’s feet.

“Anything else?” Party’s hands are opening and closing at their sides, rhythmically. “Want my pants next? Prolly be a collector’s item someday.” They’re wearing two different socks, one black and one sort-of-white, and there are holes in the toes of both. 

“How about...” Slimeball has produced something from his pocket, and he tosses it to the ground at the feet of one of his crew, arm’s reach from Jet. The beads he wears rattle like bones when he moves. “Mooch. Get over there and cut it off.”

“I’m sorry, cut what off?” There’s a note of alarm in Party’s voice now. “Cut _what_ off?”

Mooch has a face like canned tuna. He bends to pick up the object that Slimeball tossed to him—a razor, Jet realizes, the kind you might find in a box cutter. “Uh, cut what off, now?” Mooch asks, scarred brow wrinkling. 

“The hair,” says Slimeball. Where he was frenetic, ecstatic before, he’s got a languid sort of patience now. He’s got all night, and he knows it. “All that pretty red hair you can spot a mile away.”

It’s as if even the breeze has dropped dead at their feet. In the middle of it all, Party Poison has gone suddenly, terribly still. At least in the better-traveled parts of the Zones, _red-hair-blue-jacket_ means only one person, one whirling-dervish crash-queen, one human act-of-god. 

“Fuck no,” says Party Poison into the silence, and their throat is audibly dry. “Just blow my fuckin’ head off already. I’m through with this game.”

“Party!” There’s something raw and blistered in Kobra’s voice, something helpless and terrified. “Party, just let—”

Mooch gives a sudden shout, and all heads snap in his direction. Jet barely remembers creeping up on him in the crowd, is only vaguely aware of his hand around the the wavehead’s wrist. He’d only been feet from Slimeball. He could’ve reached out and grabbed him by the hand in seconds. But instead he found himself going for Mooch, as if all his attention had tunneled around that razorblade. 

“I’ll do it,” Jet hears himself say. “Just let me do it, okay? Just let me.” His lips feel curiously numb, like the one time they all dared each other to try those jarred hot peppers they’d found. 

“Fine,” says Slimeball, waving his free hand. “Have it your way. Anything funny and I send you both to the fuckin’ moon, though.”

Jet holsters his zapper and plucks the razorblade from Mooch’s fingers. It’s warm in his suddenly clammy hand. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay.” In the center of the crooked circle, Party is shaking their head, over and over, looking like they want to cut and run but their feet are cemented to the ground. Jet approaches slowly, cautiously, afraid on some weird level that Party might actually bite him if he isn’t careful.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Jet Star,” Party hisses. Their hands are hovering awkwardly in the air between them, stiff and unsure. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

On the sidelines, Kobra has started up something of a chant— _Party let him do it. Just let him do it, Party. Party, let him do it._ There’s a hysterical edge to his voice now. It’s a foreign sound, coming from him.

“Just let me,” Jet murmurs. He’s close enough to Party that they might touch now, and it might as well be miles. Party’s hands have crept up to their own head now, and they’ve got their fingers buried in their hair as if it might fly away if they don’t hold it down. “Let me,” Jet says again, in quiet counterpoint to Kobra’s endless shouted litany. Party never offers their permission, but they don’t move as Jet closes the distance between them. They’re just frozen there, not trembling but vibrating, hands in their hair and collar on their neck. 

Jet’s fingers feel huge and clumsy as he reaches out and grasps a hank of Party’s hair, just above their ear. The razorblade is blunt from overuse and doesn’t cut at first. It takes some sawing before the handful of hair comes away in Jet’s hand. Party’s hair is greasy and unwashed, and the lock lays in Jet’s hand like a dead snake. 

“Motherfucker,” Party spits into Jet’s face. “Motherfucker.” Their breath is sour with liquor. 

“Let me,” Jet says again, and reaches for Party’s hands, curled into fists against their scalp. Their hands are cold and sweat-slippery and it’s surprisingly easy to disengage them, but then they’re latched onto Jet’s shoulders, fisted in his lapels. He leaves them there and reaches for another lock of hair.

Party’s hair comes away in fistfuls under the razor. The strands stick in Jet’s sleeves, fall all over his shoes. Stray hairs lay over Party’s bare shoulders like scalpel-cuts. It’s a hackjob, and it takes years. They’re both aging here, in the middle of this circle of wolves. It feels like Jet’s eardrums have blown themselves inside out, and the only sound left in the world is the snicker of the razor through Party’s hair. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s never stopped mumbling _let me, let me, let me_ and Party’s never stopped cursing him for a motherfucker _._

There’s a bright, sharp sound from somewhere beyond the terrible orbit the two of them have entered. It takes Jet a long time to recognize it as a zapper blast. 

They re-enter reality in pieces. Around them, there are faces, and then there are colors, and then there are sounds. There’s blood on the sand. 

“A little help would be great,” Ghoul is panting from the other side of the circle. He’s holding the dead man up by the wrist, like a referee with a prizefighter. The detonator is still upright. Kobra’s across the circle in an instant, helping Ghoul to lower Slimeball’s corpse to the ground without jostling the detonator. 

“Couldn’t keep an eye on me while he was drooling over whatever you two were doin’,” Ghoul laughs, carefully prying the dead fingers off the trigger. He hands it off to Kobra.

Party’s hands aren’t in Jet’s jacket anymore. They’ve seized the zapper from Jet’s holster and they’re spinning on the spot like a top, pointing it wildly into the gathered crowd and shrieking, “Alrighty, kids, show’s over!” Their grin is back, and it’s a wound scored deep into their face, all teeth and bile. What remains of their hair is dark and hilariously uneven, their worm-pale scalp showing through in places where Jet cut too close. There are a few stray red strands still floating about their head in a wild static halo. They look terribly small without their jacket and boot and hair, Jet thinks, sort of plucked, like a chicken. But nobody could possibly misread the naked trapped-rat murder in their face, and the crowd begins to disperse. The remains of Slimeball’s crew are long gone.

“Stop it, stop it!” Ghoul barrels into Party with a surprising amount of weight for his stature. Party’s breath escapes them with an audible _whuff_ , and they stagger back. Ghoul’s got them in a bear-hug, pinning their arms to their sides. “Fucking idiot. Stop moving around so much, I dunno how stable this piece of shit is. Let me—” 

Jet is standing barely five feet away but it feels more like he’s watching through a telescope from another country as Ghoul’s clever fingers begin to work the mechanism around Party’s neck. There are red hairs stuck to his hands and he tries to scrub them off on his jeans, but they’re tangled around his sweaty fingers. They might never come off, he thinks wildly. 

* * *

It’s late, so late it’s early, and Jet Star is sitting alone in the back of the Trans Am. He hadn’t meant to spend the night here, but he just couldn’t seem to pry his ass up out of the seat. Everyone else has gone into the diner, and not even a cricket breaks the silence of the desert. It’s all just Jet Star and his ragged breathing and the dim neon buzz of the diner sign. Dawn is beginning to ooze blue into the sky.

“I’ve been wracking my brains all night, but I still got nothing,” says Kobra, who has materialized at the open window without fanfare. 

Jet is too tired for shock. He just lets his head loll over to regard Kobra. In the dim grayish light, Kobra looks like something drowned dredged up from the bottom of a lake. “How d’you mean?” Jet asks.

Kobra leans into the car, elbows on the window frame. “Who the fuck those guys even were,” he says. “I got nothin’. You?”

“No,” Jet says honestly. “I dunno.” 

“Hmm.” Kobra drums out a wandering rhythm on the inside of the car door. “He said ‘collateral.’ Think we accidentally got one of his dusted or somethin’? Like during a shootout? Or, like. I dunno. We maybe feed them bad intel or somethin’? Sell ‘em bad power packs?” 

“Dunno,” Jet says again. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation right now. He wants to go to sleep. He can’t sleep. He can still feel red hair wrapped around his fingers.

“Well.” Kobra drums out _shave-and-a-hair-cut-two-bits_. “I don’t give a shit. He’s ghosted, we ain’t. Party’s stupid head is still attached. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Serves him right. Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jet repeats.

* * *

Party’s perched on the diner counter when Jet wanders in late in the morning. There are still stray red hairs stuck to their greasy face and they have their feet tucked up underneath them like a roosting chicken. They’ve got their jacket on.

“Jet,” they drawl, tossing him a lazy wave. They haven’t stopped smiling since last night, Jet thinks. It’s like someone carved it into their face. 

“Party,” Jet says quietly. “Uh, how—”

“Would you let me hit you?” Party tilts their head at an angle that borders on unnatural. Jet’s never noticed how pale their eyes are before. 

Jet swallows. “Hit me?”

“Yeah. I want to hit you. Would you let me?”

“Yeah,” says Jet. He’s nodding, over and over. “Yeah, you can hit me.”

Party hops off the counter and is instantly a breath away from Jet’s face. Their eyes are the color of dust. “I can hit you?”

“Yeah, you can.” Jet can’t stop nodding.

For the first time since last night, the smile slips. Now Party’s face just looks stretched out, filthy and exhausted. “I don’t wanna hit you, I guess,” they say. 

“You can,” Jet says. “If you want.” He finds that he desperately wants them to.

“Yeah, well.” Party saunters back toward the diner counter and picks up a discarded spoon. They polish the back of it on their jeans and stare into the reflective surface, clicking their tongue in dismay. “Aw hell, short hair makes my head look like a thumb.” They wander away into one of the back rooms, scrubbing a hand over the dark fuzz of their hair as they go.

* * *

Jet Star doesn’t remember when he dozed off in one of the diner booths. Someone’s slapping his cheek gently. “Hey, wake up,” the someone is saying, and it’s Party Poison, whispering theatrically. “Jet Star. Jet Q. Star. Jettrey. Thomas Jetterson. Wake up.”

Before Jet’s even got his eyes open properly, Party is hoisting him up by the wrists out of the booth, propelling him toward the front door. Jet staggers out into the blazing heat of midday, blinking dust out of his eyes. Party steers him by the elbows out past the derelict gas station, past the Trans Am. Ghoul and Kobra are waiting out there, hands in pockets, and for one wild moment Jet wonders if he’s about to be tried and executed for crimes against Party Poison’s hair.

“Ready to go?” Party calls, and Ghoul gives a thumbs-up in reply. 

Party deposits Jet between Ghoul and Kobra, then walks forward a few paces, shading their eyes from the sun’s glare with one hand, looking at something on the horizon. Their other hand is down by their holster, fingers wriggling dramatically like they’re staring down a dozen gunmen at the O.K. Corral. Quick as blinking, they’re literally shooting from the hip, and the heat from the resultant explosion is intense even from this distance. The lid-flipper, Jet realizes. They must’ve kept it.

Ghoul whoops, and Kobra applauds like he’s at the opera. The wreckage of the collar rains down in flames, and the firelight catches the very tips of Party Poison’s hair, sparking bloodred among the brown.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the rolling stones’ version of “little red rooster”
> 
> @flamingo_tooth on twitter/everyoneissquidwardinpurgatory on tumblr


End file.
